


The true boundaries of evil

by Pearlislove



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Moral Lessons, Morally Ambiguous Character, The Vault (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 05:50:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12315003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pearlislove/pseuds/Pearlislove
Summary: Missy and The Doctor discusses what it means to be truly evil one evening in the vault.





	The true boundaries of evil

**Author's Note:**

> Rewatched The Five Doctors, followed by Time and The Rani, finally drawing the conclusion that it's quite possible The Rani is more evil than The Master

"Do you remember The Rani?" It's sudden, Missy letting her random little thought slip as she munched away on her noodles and pork.  
  
The Doctor swallowed some of his chicken, glancing at Missy. "Quite violently. Why?" He raised an eyebrow, clearly suspicious of Missy's reason for bring her up.  
  
Missy shrugged. "She was evil, wasn't she? They always say I'm the evil one, the rotten apple, but what about her?" She turned her head to The Doctor, looking him in  the eyes. Something wet and annoying burned at the corner of the eyes and she tried desperately to will away the salt droplets of water.  
  
The Doctor stared right back, shocked and almost choking on the chiken. "I can't say I appreciated her, seeing as she cost me a regeneration. Made me crack my skull right open because the TARDIS shook so badly when she kidnapped it." The Doctor frowned deeply, pausing his food intake as to not choke again. "So I guess she was quite evil, yes. Why?" This time, The Doctor reached out with his hand, attempting to pull away one of the small, glistening tears falling down Missy's cheek. "Why has it got you so upset?"  
  
Missy pulled back, not wanting to feel The Doctor's warm touch. "She scared me, Doctor.  Always did. I...I liked to make people suffer, but my game had _rules_ . I didn't kill you directly, nor did I ever do any permanent damage to your companions only. Well, except Fitz...still! Rules is what make games fun to play, and while they can broken to some extent... The Rani had no rules." Missy explains, ice cold dread pulling at her guts.  
  
Glancing over at her, The Doctor had a sudden flashback to when he met the Master for the first time in his third regeneration. "Where are you going with this, Missy?"  
  
Missy shrugged once more. It was a sensible question to ask, but she didn't know what to answer for she barely knew herself.  "I just....maybe I was never evil. Not truly. Because...truly evil, that is The Rani. No comsciens, no limits. I just want to play. Rani doesn't play, she could have full on killed you and made you burn through the rest of your regenerations and it wouldn't have touched her, had it given the desired results." Missy frowns, and she can feel more tears burnign in her eyes.  
  
Suddenly, hearing Missy's words and seeing the tears glistening in her dark eyes, The Doctor understood. He understood why she'd brought up The Rani in the conversation. It was all about _being good_.   
  
The distinction between a lost case and someone who could be salvaged.  
  
The fact that The Doctor never gave up on The Master/Mistress, but gave up trying to salvage The Rani decades ago.

The last they'd seen of her, she'd attempted to trap him in a 30 year time loop in East End, and he hadn't tried nor wished to speak to her since. It was common courtesy to leave well enough alone, either way. 

  
It was so funny. Because out of the little group of misfits that they were, him and Missy and The Monk and The Rani, she had always seemed to be getting along with the rest of Time Lord society best of all. She wasn't perfect, of course, but she fitted far better with their people than any of her renegade friends ever would.

 

For a while, The Doctor had hoped she could have the blessing of not feeling so isolated and unwanted as he’d always done.  
  
And yet, something had twisted and snapped inside her. A violent shake to her very person, and it all went wrong. Suddenly she couldn't even procure the theoretical idea of how an empathic being might feel if watching someone be subjected to one of her experiments anymore. Her results and her tests went before anything and everything else that she cared for.  
  
Time Lord Society caused Missy and The Doctor and The Monk to _break free,_ but it _broke_ _down_ The Rani.  
  
Somehow it makes The Doctor feel proud to see Missy finally starting to grip a part of the lesson he wanted her to learn in the vault. All too happy for the circumstances, he seize her hand, squeezing it. He wanted to reassure Missy that she was right, that she was thinking right, and that he loved her for realizing it. "You're not that broken and lost, Missy. " He says, . "You'll _never_ be that broken and lost. I won't allow it."  
  
And he means it. For he will always protect Missy, as far and as much as he ever can.

  
She would never become what The Rani had.  


**Author's Note:**

> Kudos & comments thank you!


End file.
